Mint, the version I have installed, you don't lose the option to keep using your distribution as soon as the distributor stops releasing updates..--so you will have plenty of time to decide, I would say at least 1 year or longer..

I also looked at the link you gave, and unlike a review or discussion about Orphan OS or Linux distributions that disappear, there is nothing there discussing that problem..

In fact many people are able to scratch their nostalgia itch by maintaining some access to an OS they appreciated or like in some way in their past--for example, there are still many commodore or Atari or Amiga fans around, who can run their favorite OS in an emulator--or if you used Mainframes or minis, you might like to use a PDP emulator or an MVS emulator (Hercules), all of which will give you the native look and fell and operation of those systems

For example, I was a big fan of BEOS, and have been watching Haiku recently, even though it is not quite ready (missing a package manager and software valet, a very nice one button install manager, wireless and a few other issues..), it does install and run

I also like MVS, in fact I would say that the Micro revolution has now adopted many of the mainframe characteristics of structured environments and some planning, although how close to the rigor of the mainframe process they have gotten, I am not so sure..

Last edited by DrHu on Tue May 22, 2012 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Just about any one of the other distros that I've installed or currently have installed would be fine with me.

I hated the "trapped" feeling I had with Windows. I've made it a point to never let myself get too tied down to any one Linux distro, so I always have at least two distros installed. I prefer to have three or four.

I like to consider myself "a Linux user," not "a Mint user" or "a Mepis user" or whatever. If Clem stopped putting Mint out there, I'd feel sad about it but it wouldn't affect me much.

I already run it, PCLOS. I run Mint 9 and PCLOS 2010.1 and Windows XP in a triple boot I update the two linux distros ever day or two. I run PCLOS with KDE and Mint with Gnome. Some days I boot Mint other days I boot PCLOS. Eventually I will get Wine or Virtual box running to move completely off Winders. I'll probably do wine in one distro and virtual box on the other.

Both are stable on my main box and fun to use and between the two there is not much I can't find in one repo or the other. They both have nice looking default themes and they are stable and both did great jobs detecting hardware and installing non-free drivers. It either one disappeared I would happily use the other.

You mean after running the existing Mint 9 for however many years before it wouldn't run anymore? LOL. Probably PeppermintOS. Seems to be the next best thing.@Kendall: I only say next best because I like gnome. lxde would take getting use to.

I'm with MALsPa: just as a rose is a rose is a rose, Linux is Linux is Linux. I find that I customize what ever distro I use so that its own mother or progenitor wouldn't recognize it anyway, so it doesn't make a whole lot of difference which one I start from. I use Mint for my daily work since Mint starts out being more what I want to end up with than any other distro I've tried. Also because I've found that Mint is a very good distro for the people who are new to Linux or don't want to know enough about computers to care what their operating system is. I advise several of these and it makes sense to use what I'm providing for them.

Mint 9 is LTS so everybody is probably good for a couple of years unless some wonderful new thing came along. Me. I might go back to openSUSE, which I used happily for years (and imposed on others) while I still had a formal job. It requires much more tweeking to get it where I want it than Mint, but it is very tweekable. YaST is a very good thing. Straight old Ubuntu would work too. Linux is Linux is Linux.

I'd have to say that if Mint disappeared I'd probably just go back to Debian or Slackware. Though it has been awhile since I used a distro that didn't autoconfig everything about the OS I think I could handle switching back.